The Calm Before
by 1755
Summary: "All I ever wanted was this, you know. Quidditch. You. A house."
Written for Future Madam Pomfrey. Prompts: Katie/Oliver, Hurt/Comfort and Family (sort of), Second Wizarding War

* * *

Katie finds Oliver in the team's infirmary still in his Quidditch robes, his right arm in a sling, wind-burned skin mud-encrusted and wet from the rain. She wonders briefly why no one's bothered to solve these problems with a quick drying charm and a _tergeo_ , but her confusion is quickly replaced with concern when he doesn't even lift the corners of his mouth at the sight of her like he usually does. Instead, his eyes are intense and angry, a different sort of frustration from the kind he usually feels when he has to miss out on part of a match, harder somehow. Harsh.

He eyes her as she approaches and she takes a gentle seat at the foot of his bed.

"I thought you were supposed to be at work," he says, wincing in pain as he readjusts his position to look at her levelly. She shrugs, trying for nonchalance.

"Pat let me go early. Figures the one match I'd miss you'd get hurt," she tries to joke with a weak smile, and he doesn't comment on the fact that Pat, the owner of Quality Quidditch Supplies and the uptight boss she's spent many a night venting about, would _never_ let her go early. His uninjured hand turns up, offering a dirty palm to grasp, and she doesn't even hesitate. "What happened?" she says softly.

"Some people from the Ministry showed up at the stadium. Umbridge and her lot," he says, and she sucks in a hiss of air. "Made people give up their wands before they were allowed in, caused quite a fuss."

"I can imagine." Her voice is barely audible over the sound of the heavy rain pounding the roof of the old wooden building. The sound of rain like this has always made her feel cozy and safe inside, but now it gives her an odd sense of isolation. She looks to Oliver's familiar features and holds onto them like an anchor in a choppy sea.

"Newell's girlfriend was arrested and taken away, and he was a bit—" he pauses, searching for the right word, "—distracted. Missed a Bludger coming for me. We've got no reserve keeper anymore, not since Porter had to go into hiding, so…" It's his turns to shrug now, a strange one-shouldered thing, and Katie thinks things have gotten dire if Oliver, who has always had a love bordering on obsession with Quidditch, can do nothing more than shrug about being injured and losing a match.

"I met her once," she says, squeezing his hand tightly, "at that charity ball last October, remember? Lucille, I think? I didn't know she was Muggle-Born. She was nice, I hope she's all right."

Oliver looks down at the clasped hands, rubbing a thumb over the skin on her knuckles. "I heard there were riots at the Wasps – Kestrals match last week."

She'd heard it too, of course, from people at the shop, though she'd decided against mentioning it to Oliver when he'd come home frustrated from a difficult practice and in need of a bath and some chamomile tea, not terrifying news that would only make things worse. He wasn't the type to get frightened easily, not at all, but things were different now. This was war.

"Angelina told me that—" she begins, but stops when the team Healer passes by with an armful of fresh towels. Katie moves closer as she waits for the tiny woman to pass by with brisk, business-like steps, and Oliver gives Katie a small smile.

"You smell good," he says suddenly, and she laughs a little.

"I'd say the same to you, love, but I'd be lying." She wrinkles her nose in mock disgust and he swats her arm half-heartedly. "Anyway, I smell like leather and broom wax."

"Exactly," he says. Her wand tingles comfortingly in her hand when she waves it over him to vanish the most of the dirt, and she pushes him over so she can fit under his uninjured arm.

"Angie?" he reminds her once the Healer has returned to her office. The building, though not as old as the team itself, is going on at least two hundred years, and is creaky in the rain and wind. The walls are thin too, and Katie can hear the other woman singing to herself in her office. It's a bit startling to hear such a happy-sounding song in here. It's not, of course, the first time Katie's made her way to the infirmary after a game or been Floo-called following a rough practice, but the feeling of unease never quite loosens its grip on her lungs, even though she knows that magic will heal him and leave no scar.

She lowers her voice. "She says that the DA's been training again."

Oliver had never been in the DA, but he'd heard enough of Katie's stories to know everything about it. "I thought Harry was—" He pauses.

"—gone, yeah. Ginny and Neville took it over, she says."

"Little Neville Longbottom!" Oliver exclaims, then sighs, tightening his hold on her shoulder. "What are you saying, then?"

She looks up at the wooden beams that have held up the roof for two hundred years, then out the window at the pitch, currently under risk of flood, where athletes and fans have met and flown and fought and won and lost for centuries, and again at Oliver, who's looking at her with apprehension and the kind of love that rips her breath out of her chest and makes her feel helpless, like she's going to explode. It's a look she thinks he might see reflected back at him in her eyes.

"I… This is a war, Ol."

"You're saying we're going to fight."

He says it as a statement, not as a question, and her breath catches on the _we_ more than the _fight_. "We might have to."

"Fuck," he says, and she can do nothing but nod. " _Fuck_. All I ever wanted was this, you know."

"A broken arm?" she jokes, but it's weak, and she knows it.

"Quidditch. You. A house. A dog. Kids, maybe one day, so I can teach them how to fly, and, well. You know."

She knows, because she wants it too. So badly. But Angelina had spoken with a quiet fear that didn't belong in her normally strong voice, and had told her the stories she'd heard from Hogwarts – Cruciatus Curses used on students, Luna Lovegood missing – and about the injuries she'd seen at St Mungo's, horrible Dark things no one had seen for years, and that dream, Oliver's dream, her dream, seems out of reach.

"I can fly too, you know," she says softly. He huffs out something that might be a laugh.

"We'll teach them together. I just – I feel like everything's beginning to fall into place, and it's being taken away from us. They _literally_ took Newell's girlfriend away. That's not _right_ ," he says with emphasis.

"Hey, Wood!" someone suddenly yells from the door, and they look up to see McKenna, the last remaining Reserve Chaser, no longer in uniform, wringing out her blonde hair on a towel and stepping into the room. "We're going out for consolation drinks tonight at the Seahorse, come after you're allowed to leave? Oh, you too, Katie, of course," she adds as an afterthought. "We haven't got a match for another week!"

"We've got practice though," Oliver points out. Katie knows his strict personal policy on alcohol during the Quidditch season, and knows even if he were to go, he wouldn't touch a bottle.

McKenna shrugs and tosses the towel in a laundry bin by one of the beds – perfect aim, of course. "Coach is coming too. Anyway, we're going around half eight, if you wanna swing by. I'm off, see you!"

She walks away with a wave and the swagger Katie has come to recognize most professional Quidditch players have.

"You should go," Katie says once she leaves, but he shakes his head.

She thinks what she'd said is weighing on his mind when he says "I think I'm going to go home. Quidditch. You. House."

"You really want a dog?"

This time he really does laugh and she leans over to taste it, a chaste kiss on his lips, the chuckle fading away, leaving a comforting silence filled only by the sound of rain and soft skin touching skin.

"Maybe." The angle is awkward because of the bed and his arm but he sighs into the second kiss anyway.

"We'll be fine, Ol. It'll be okay. We'll fight, we'll live, we'll get a dog. And kids, after all that."

It may be a bit soon to begin talking about children, she thinks fleetingly, but if she's old enough to become a soldier in a war, then maybe it's not too soon.

Maybe it's just right.


End file.
